


Don't Wait Up

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [262]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bearded Steve Rogers, Longing, M/M, Opportunity Lost, Pining, SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME, Secrets, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-08 20:17:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18630541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: You couldn’t do any of that then, when you were both little more than just kids. When the world, for all its cruelties, hadn’t found a way to be truly unkind. You’ve lived through all that, though, have come out a different man, and that’s why you’ve come here, to an anonymous Saturday night in 1938, to take the steps you couldn’t follow back then.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I had issues with the ending of Endgame; that's putting it nicely. So here's a different take on how Steve might make use of time travel.
> 
> This is not warm and fuzzy, folks, so if you need fluff to soothe your heart after Endgame, I wouldn't look here.

You remember the address. You remember how to get there from uptown, from the places you and Buck used to peer into, these little bastions of a richer kind of life: men’s shops and fancy boutiques and restaurants with big glass windows where you could watch people eat with two forks and sip at their wine and not worry for a moment about what their next meal would look like, where it would come from, and when.

It was better in the years before the war, you remember. As the Depression gave way to the New Deal, the basics became just that again, basic: there was food on the shelves and a swing in a man’s step. Nobody thought all that much about Europe, about the little shouty guy from Germany who was making all that noise. No, it’d felt like the clouds were lifting in New York then, everywhere, every inch of the US of A; who had time to think about other countries’ wars? If the folks across the ocean wanted to shoot at each other, that was their problem and it’d stay where it belonged, wouldn’t it? Over There.

You hadn’t known then what would happen, what was coming. You, who’d read all the papers since grade school, who used to quiz people at the bus stop about the price of tea in China, about the deaths of kings and queens, about who’d been elected and who’d been shot and who was gonna run for president next year. You couldn’t afford the papers, even, and it didn’t matter; you’d hunkered down at the library on Saturdays until Bucky dragged you to the movies reading every word in newsprint you could get your hands on. It’d been important to understand what was going on because you had no control over any of it. Hell, you could hardly walk two blocks without falling over and you were a kid and no decision you made then could have any effect on what you read in the papers, zip, zero, none, which was exactly why you needed to know every detail you could. Because that was power, too, knowing, understanding how small you were in the grand scheme of things. As a kid, there was nothing you could do to change what was happening--who was winning and who was dying, who had food and who didn’t, who got sick and who could be saved--but damn if you weren’t bound and determined to make sure that one day, some day, you’d find a way to make sure you could.

But as you walk the last block and turn the corner at Feagle’s Market, dodge a couple of kids playing stickball in the street, you’re not thinking about the big picture. This is a mission you’ve designed for yourself. You and only you, that’s who this matters to; nobody else in the whole goddamn world.

 _It’s ok_ , you tell yourself as you slide into the shadows across the street, hidden from the last rays of the sun. _You can have this; you’ve earned it. It’s one night, after all. Just one._

The lights are on in the apartment upstairs. You used to fuss at Buck for leaving them burning, but he never cared. Not until the electric bill came, anyway, and then he’d be mad at himself for a day and then fall right back into being wasteful about it, all the pennies they spent bathed in unnecessary light. He’d never liked the dark, never seen the need for it; Bucky, god bless him, back in those days had lived his life out there in the light, bold as brass and cocky as hell and if you’d loved him anymore than you had, your heart would’ve burst. It always felt like it was going to back then, now; you’d always had a little thing for him, a skip in your chest when he was close, when he smiled at you that you could never name, but moving in with him after your mom passed had made that thing into a monster, a never-ending rush of feeling that you didn’t know what do with and were real, real afraid to name.

You loved him. You know that now. You found a way to say to him, eventually, once you’d both been dead and resurrected, but it was too late then. Life had gotten too complicated; there wasn’t time for it, back in your now, in the world to which you’ve devoted so much of yourself, so much of your energy, so much what seems so precious now: your time.

So you know what the younger version of you whose silhouette is framed by the curtains Bucky’s sister made in home economics is feeling, how heavy and twisted his heart is. Especially on a Saturday night.

You remember watching Bucky get ready for a night out, watching him slide into his best shoes and neatly mended trousers and slicking back his hair with military precision and drowning himself in cologne.

 _What_? he’d say when you made a face, made a show of fanning the odor away. _You don’t like it? Too bad. Shows you got no class. The girls at Brewster's do, believe me._

You remember sighing, sighing and crossing your arms over your chest and squeezing back the feeling, the greed, the sudden awful need to throw yourself around him and bury your face against his neck, breathe the smell of him in. _If you have to bring one home_ , your mouth would say, sassy, _you’re taking the couch._

A shark’s grin in the tiny bathroom mirror. _You mean, I’m taking her on the couch._

_And for god’s sake, make sure she gets home after. Don’t leave her there for me to stumble over in the morning. A dame with no shirt on isn’t the best visual to take with me to church._

Bucky would laugh, laugh and throw his comb on the sink. _God doesn’t care if you have a hard on, punk._

 _Yeah, well,_ you’d say as he gently pushed past you and went for his coat. _Maybe I do_.

He looked handsome on nights like that, did Buck; not the rough-and-tumble good looking that he wore every day, but put together, razor sharp. From a distance, in the dim light of Brewster’s bar, you couldn’t tell that his cuffs were faded. He looked like a million bucks.

 _Be good_ , he’d bellow as he opened the door, one foot out in the hall. _And do me a favor, huh? Don’t wait up._

 _Yeah, don’t worry_ , _jerk_ , you’d snort, giving him that last shove into the evening, swallowing that last, rotten instinct to reach for his hand. _I won’t._

You remember the way your stomach dropped when the door closed and you shot the lock, the way the smell of his cologne lingered and fooled you, if you’d let it, into thinking that he was still close. But he wasn’t, of course; he was pounding down the stairs and saying hey to the neighbors and pushing out the front door and into the night, into the arms of somebody who wasn’t you, somebody who was brave enough to say something, to want something, to ask to be wanted back.

You couldn’t do any of that then, when you were both little more than just kids. When the world, for all its cruelties, hadn’t found a way to be truly unkind. You’ve lived through all that, though, have come out a different man, and that’s why you’ve come here, to an anonymous Saturday night in 1938, to take the steps you couldn’t follow back then, to walk parallel to Bucky as he ambles towards the bar, cigarette in his teeth and a grin on his lips and a swing in his shoulders you’d forgotten ever lived there, god. Tonight, you’re a stranger and you can make him see you and tonight, oh tonight, you feel brave.


	2. Chapter 2

The bar is crowded already and it’s barely nine. The front door’s propped open and you can catch the music, the chatter, from a full block away. Bucky slows as he approaches and so do you, trailing gently behind him now as he stops to chat with a few people clustered outside, drinks in hand and smiles when they see Bucky, smiles that go on for days.

They ignore you once he ducks inside, once you pick up the pace a bit and follow him in. Not one of them, young and stupid and happy, gives you a second look, which is exactly how it should be.

You came Brewster’s often enough when you lived up the street: for a beer, a chance to hear the game on the radio when yours was spazzing out, to listen to the old men who held down the place bicker about women who’d left them, women they’d never married, women who were walking by on the street. Back then, you thought you could teach yourself to want to the right things if you tried hard enough; if you stared at a girl’s chest or at her skirt as she walked away, traced its sway, tried to imagine your hand sliding beneath it and finding softness instead of the rough swell of an eager dick.

You tried. For years, did you try. It didn’t take.

_You’re a romantic_ , Bucky had told you philosophically, his hands lost in the soapy depths of the sink. _That’s your problem, Stevie. You’re one of those guys who can’t get it up until he meets the right girl._

You’d poked him hard, index into the meat of his shoulder. _Just because I’m not a letch doesn’t mean I don’t know how my dick works._

He’d laughed and turned on the tap, started rinsing a plate. _I ain’t saying you don’t. What I’m saying is that you gotta give yourself time, is all. It’ll happen. You’ll meet her someday, a Betty who’ll get all your wheels going._

_I will, huh?_

_Yeah, and knowing you, she’ll be some real classy type. Smarter than hell, of course, and tough, too._ He’d grinned at you as you snatched the plate away, went after it hard with a towel. _She’ll have to be, won’t she, huh? Whoever you get hitched to, kid, they’ll need to call you on your shit._

You shook your head and held out your hand. Bucky was always so damn pokey with the dishes. _I thought that was your job, Buck._

_Oh, it is_ , Bucky said. _It is. But once you find that pretty lady, there won’t be enough spring in your ego to take both of us knocking you back into line._

He’s wearing that same cockiness tonight, the chip on his shoulder, the smile that refuses to dim. You don’t make a show of keeping eyes on him, but then, he makes it easy: he’s the most beautiful one in the place.

You perch at the end of the bar where you remember the old men gathering like hens; they aren’t here tonight, though. They never liked it rowdy. Made it too hard to enjoy their cheap gin. The bartender finds you, eventually, and gives up an _I’m sorry_ shrug.

“Sorry to keep you hanging,” he says. “Saturdays, jesus. It’s like a zoo in here.”

You spread your hands and smile. “It’s ok. Must be good for business.”

He snorts. “Good, sure, maybe for the till. But there’s gonna be some shit in here tonight, I can feel it.” He sighs. “Five bucks says somebody puts a chair through the plate glass window again. Happens every damn spring.”

You order a whiskey on the rocks and he comes back with it double quick. Lingers for a second. You can feel his eyes scrape your face.

“You just get back in port or something?” he says.

“Why do you ask?”

He scrubs a hand over his chin. “That beard, son. You been away from a razor for a good long while, it looks like, which makes me think Navy. I was on a ship back in ‘14 and some guys were too scared of the waves to ever shave until they were back on dry land.”

You chuckle. “Were you?”

“Nah, not really. Never could manage more than a peach fuzz back then.”

You’d been careful about your beard--it afforded you some security, you’d figured, the ability to pass, and so far, it’s worked out all right. But the bartender has a point: nobody under 50 back in the day would be caught dead with these kind of whiskers; _take the lifeline_ , you tell yourself. _Don’t sink_.

“Yeah,” you say, “you got me. We just landed in port last night.” You tug at your tie, smooth a palm down your white shirt. “That’s what I get for trying to play civvie, huh?”

The bartender opens his mouth, clearly delighted, but from the other end of the bar, there’s a shout:

“Hey, Chase! You gonna talk to your sweetheart all night? We got thirsty people down here!”

Chase winces and then rolls his eyes at you. “What’d I tell you?” he says mournfully. “Ain’t even 10 and they’re all ready itching for a fight.”

You scan the crowd as he moves away and find Bucky on the dance floor, a flowery redhead in his arms. The talk is so loud you wonder how they can hear the music--Benny Goodman, maybe, something with a sway and a swing--but then you see his head bent to her ear, her head falling back in laughter, his smile when she moves closer and tightens her grip.

You don’t really have a plan for this evening, beyond being in the same place as him. You trusted yourself, the urgency of your circumstances, to help you find your way to him-- _Ok_ , you tell yourself rueful, _you did have a plan. It’s called a wing and a prayer_. An approach Tony would’ve approved of: just turning in the right direction and hurling yourself in. There’s a twinge in your gut when you think of him, an ache, and now is not the time to examine that, is it? You’ve got your hands full with enough of your past.

You rattle the ice in your glass and order another. Tony would’ve approved of that, too.

By the time it’s down the hatch and Chase has refused your money--“From one sailor to another, put that shit away”--Bucky’s moved on to a blonde. The music’s slow now, a sweetheart’s kind of lament, and her head is on his shoulder, her hands clasped around his back. You can see his hips sway, his arm turned tight around her waist. They look good together.

So good that it gets you off the stool and weaving pointedly through the crush; so good that when you tap him on the shoulder and say “May I cut in?” the look he gives you would cut glass.

“Honey,” he says to the girl, her brown eyes suddenly wide, “this gentleman wants to take you away from me for a minute. Are you ok with that?”

The girl looks you up and down, so slow it makes you blush, and when her gaze finds yours again, she’s grinning. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I’m fine.”

Your heart is in your ears, being this close to him; the movement of the crowd has you pressed a bit against his back. He smells of clean sweat and the damned cologne and even as he lets the girl go and she curls into your grip, his eyes never leave you.

“I’ll be over there when you’re done,” he says to the girl over the din. “In the corner booth by the cigarette machine.”

She doesn’t spare him a glance. “Ok.”  
  
You watch him stalk off, the blood in his face high. He keeps looking back. Maybe he’s looking at the girl, sleek and white sheathed and practically purring in your arms. _Or maybe_ , your intuition tells you, instinct on the rocks with hope, _he's watching you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...this one is running away from me. Or with me. Both.


	3. Chapter 3

When the song ends--or the record skips, hard to tell in all the hustle--the girl doesn’t want to let you go.

You make the right noises and try to extract yourself gently; she asks for another dance.

“Isn’t your fella waiting for you?” you ask.

She laughs, a coy little hum you can feel in her chest. “The kid? He’s not my fella. But you could be, even with that spread you got on your face.” Her hand finds your cheek, rubs at the scratch. “What do you think?”

You dip your head so she can hear you. She smells bright, like gladiolas in June. “I think you’re beautiful, sweetheart, but not tonight.”

“Ok,” she says. Her lips turn against your cheek in a pout. “Maybe some other time, huh?”

By the time you work your way away from the music, you’re half afraid that Bucky’s left. You peer towards the corner he’d claimed, then back towards the bar, and it’s only when you break around a gaggle of tipsy college boys that you see him again.

He’s wedged in a tiny booth, one crammed into the last cranny of space at the back. There’s a crowded ashtray on the table and a glass that’s more sweat that beer and he’s lost his jacket and he’s glaring at you like there are about to be fists.

“Oh, hey,” he says, salty, “look who it is. Why am I not surprised?”

For a moment--a long one, if you’re honest--your heart sticks in your throat. Has he recognized you? Shit, no. How could he? You’re wearing a body he’s never seen and surely he hasn’t heard enough of your voice to even lay down a guess that you’re--

“I came to apologize,” you say, which you didn’t. “I didn’t mean to get between you and that pretty lady.”

He sits back and stretches an arm along the back of the bench, takes a slow, languid drag. “Sure you did. You’ve been casing me all evening like some dime-store dick. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

The words are caustic, but his face--flushed from heat and from drinking, his eyes lit up like Roman candles--are definitely not.

“I, uh--”

“Sit down,” he says with a flippant little gesture. “If you want.”

You sit across from him and there’s blood in your ears, watching him smoke, watching the lazy way his lips curl around the filter, the way the cig slips between his fingers. He’s making a show of being perfectly relaxed but you know him well enough to see through it, and even if you didn’t, there’s an energy radiated from his body that you’re pretty sure most people could see in the dark.

Bucky taps out some ash. “I’ve never seen you before, have I?”

God. “No. We just pulled in yesterday. I’m, ah”--you bless Chase silently--“we’re in port just for tonight.”

“Not much of a shore leave, is it?”

You make yourself shrug. “That’s how it works, sometimes: Uncle Sam points and we go. They don’t take a vote.”

He sighs, extravagant and with a smile. “One last night of freedom, huh?”

You return it. “Last one for a while, yeah.”

“Interesting place for you to spend it, a little neighborhood joint like this. I bet there are lots of places that would’ve treated you better than this.” His eyes slide down your throat and over your chest. “Especially if you were in uniform.”

“This place is treating me all right.”

“Yeah?” He stubs out his cig and shows you some teeth. “That’s good to hear.”

There are paragraphs behind every sentence, you can feel it, a novel behind every glance and it has you going, this little game of shadows, of suggestion clothed in a smile. God, you think, your heart going twinge, what you wouldn’t have given for him to look at you like this back then, across the kitchen table or over the top of the paper or just before you snapped of the lamp that sat between your beds. One glimpse of this Bucky, this willing, leonine grace, and you’d have crossed that distance between you and crawled into his arms and handed him kiss after kiss.

Would you have? Maybe.

But the man you are now--all you’ve seen, the people you’ve come to know--now, it’s easy to let your hand stretch over the table and wrap your fingers around his half-empty glass, to lift it to your lips and down the rest of it, bitter, flat pilsner, and set it back down, your mouth wet.

“That was mine,” he says mildly.

“I know. I was thirsty.”

His gaze locks on your lips, his tongue touching his own. “Kinda my favorite beer, actually.”

“Why is that?”

His eyes turn up and he smirks, sharp and perfect. “Love the taste.”

It’s such a terrible line, so perfectly Bucky, that part of you wants to laugh, but the rest of you, the best of you, trembles at the thought of his mouth.

“Maybe,” you say, aiming for casual, “we should step outside for a minute, huh? I could use some air.”

“Yeah,” he says, that smirk now a smile, “it’s like a furnace in here. Come on. We’ll go out the back.”

 

***  


Outside, the air’s not that much cooler but at least it’s moving; there’s a little breeze that stirs the papers in the alley. Outside, Bucky doesn’t look at you. Tips his face instead up to the moon.

“If you’re with the moral squad,” he says, “then do us both a favor, huh, and leave now.”

“If I’m what?”

“I mean, to be honest, you’re too pretty for Vice.” He ducks his head, gives you eyelashes over his shoulder. “And way too patient; cops don’t generally go for the long game. And I’ve never seen a Vice man get stiff from just talking before. Or is that a party favor from the honey?”

Oh god. There's shame in your face now, a fair pulse of panic. “I'm sorry, I--?”

He shakes his head, Bucky, shakes his head and turns, turns and steps up toe-to-toe. “If you’re planning to kiss me,” he murmurs, “like you’ve been dying to all evening, now, old man, would be the time.”

He doesn’t move an inch, not a goddamn centimeter; just waits for you to reach up and cup his face, for you to smooth your thumbs down his cheeks and make him hum for you, sigh, before you bend down to meet him at last.

His mouth is soft and bitter with beer and smoke. His hands find your wrists and he holds on to you, opens for you, whimpers when you find his tongue.

You’ve dreamed about this for too many years, too many; imagined what it would feel like to have him pressed to you like this, like the girl was, but better. Where she was soft and strong, Bucky’s body is hard and yielding, like an oak that sways in the wind, that lets you push him and pin him to back alley brick and spreads his legs when you touch his hip, when your hands drift from his face to stroke at his shirtsleeves and feel the spine of his cock arching anxious in his pants.

You’re hot, an oven turned up to baking, and when he gets his hands beneath your coat and digs his nails into the damp stretch of your back, your whole body feels like fire, your heart does, each kick of its motor saying: _I’ve got him. I’ve got you. I’ve got him back_.

He has a hand in your hair and he’s rutting against you, trying, his hips lifting in vain, hungry jerks as he moans into your mouth, and vaguely, you realize how hard you are, how good it feels to have him like this, trapped and happy and greedy. A few more minutes like this, crushed between the brick and your body, you tell yourself faintly, the part of you that still cares about words, and he’ll lose it.

This isn’t what you’d pictured, any of it. You thought if you kissed him, it would be somewhere safe, behind a locked door; curtains drawn and both of you lost in the dark. You thought he’d take you somewhere, if you made it this far, maybe even back home, so you could make him come all over that old creaky settee he and his dad had found on a street corner the day before you moved in.

There was nothing in your head about the open air, about the sound of traffic and the buzz of nearby streetlights; nothing about him being so goddamn reckless where half the neighborhood could see if they looked close enough and you wonder--a brief, awful flicker--if this is where he took all the men that he’d been with, the ones you’d never known about until years later, lifetimes, when you’d both lost so much there wasn’t much room left for regret.

_Five or six_ , he’d said on the way to Wakanda, when your eyes were focused on the controls of the Quinjet, on the view straight ahead. _Not the smartest thing I ever did. You know how dangerous that stuff was back then._

_You ever get rolled?_ you’d asked, your voice calmer than the sudden storm in your head. _Or arrested?_

_Me?_ Bucky had chuckled, an echo of his old self. _No, Stevie. Never did. Don’t you think you’ve have noticed if I disappeared to the pokey?_

_Maybe_ , you’d said, wondering, flipping back the scrapbook of your mind, searching, angry. How the hell hadn’t you know? How the hell could you have missed that? _Maybe not._

He’d set his hand on your shoulder, leaned up to give it a squeeze. _You know me,_ he’d said lightly. _I used to be lucky, back in the day. Maybe that’s what happened, huh? I burned it all up back then._

Now, you reach up and tug open his tie, work the button of his collar and another and bury your face there, at the base of his throat, the first sunny stretch of his chest, and he makes the prettiest noise, a soft, hot sound that makes your dick jerk. It gets prettier when you bite down, when you lick at his pulse and press your knee between his legs and draw him up and over your thigh.

“Oh, fuck,” Bucky says, two words spit out, breathless. “Oh, god. Yes.”

“Yes?” you whisper, nosing the word into his skin. “You like that, honey?”

He grunts and grabs at your ass, clawing. “I’d like it better if you were touching my dick.”

You kiss his jaw and don’t try to hide your shudder. “Is that so?”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” he says again, wilder this time, hitching his hips against you. "Please, jesus. I want your hand on me when you make me come.”


End file.
